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Go to http://greenchef.com/50THETAKE and use code 50THETAKE to get 50% off your first month, then 20% off for two months with free shipping! | There’s a problem that’s become more and more...
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00:00There's a problem that's become more and more prevalent across social media,
00:04popping up in nearly every comment section and thread.
00:07It seems that personalized algorithms have caused some people to forget that
00:12not everything they encounter online is made exclusively for them.
00:17From the bean soup controversy and beyond, people have noticed what feels like a drop
00:22in critical thinking skills, dovetailing with an uptick in self-centeredness.
00:27And it seems that a lesser known culprit might be at the root of the problem, covert narcissism.
00:34So how is this different from the regular narcissism we're used to,
00:38and why is it seemingly taken over online?
00:41Is there any hope of things changing for the better?
00:44Let's take a closer look.
00:46We're all pretty familiar with classic narcissism, when people's inflated egos turn into full-on
00:51main character syndrome, and they feel that they truly are the center of the universe and need
00:57everyone to get on board with that.
00:59They're openly attention-seeking and arrogant, usually with a very inflated sense of self-esteem.
01:05Overt narcissists, however, are, as the name suggests, not so overt about their entitled self-image.
01:12Instead of being loud and boastful, they instead go in the other direction,
01:16putting on the airs of being meek and unsure so as to elicit the desired praise and adoration of
01:22those around them.
01:23As Jody Clark wrote for Very Well Mind,
01:26the overt narcissist will demand admiration and attention,
01:30where the covert narcissist will use softer tactics to meet those same goals.
01:35The covert narcissist will be much more likely to constantly seek reassurance about their talent,
01:39skills, and accomplishments, looking for others to feed that same need for self-importance.
01:45I don't really think you would understand any of my problems because you seem like you have a tremendous
01:48amount of willpower and general togetherness.
01:51We've come to see this play out in comment sections online, where people,
01:55when confronted with anything that doesn't 100% align with their own views of how things are or
02:00should be done, begin wildly crashing out, worrying that they're doing it wrong or that it doesn't
02:05specifically fit with their own lives and experiences. All to get people to then comment
02:10and reassure them that they are good and doing things right. This is also often paired with
02:16admonishment of whoever made the original video for not including every possible variation and
02:21exception that could exist. Trent will dig into more in just a moment.
02:25Any helpful video on the internet is flooded with comments about why a person can't do it or it
02:31doesn't apply to them.
02:32Overt narcissist's deep insecurity leads them to fear criticism. But because they see everything that
02:38differs from their own experiences and preferences as direct criticism, they constantly feel the need to
02:44lash out to defend themselves. But whereas this lashing out might be more direct with a more
02:49classic narcissist, covert narcissists instead desire to find ways to frame themselves as a victim in
02:56some capacity. This allows them to frame every issue as being about them specifically, while at the
03:02same time seeking out that praise and reassurance that they are right.
03:07Like I didn't do it to hurt you. You gotta believe me. I should've told you right away. I know that.
03:13But you know now, so can we please talk about it?
03:16Because they aren't as outwardly overbearing as the more overt narcissists,
03:20the covert narcissists can find it easier to escape by with bad behavior hidden behind a
03:26gosh, you couldn't be mad at little old me, could you, facade.
03:29Take Emily from Emily in Paris, for example. She's convinced that she's a nice person who
03:35only wants to do the right thing, but is constantly creating problems big and small
03:40due to her own covert narcissism. From the jump, she lets her new co-workers know that she doesn't
03:45really see them as equals, as she's refused to even try to learn the language, because she knows
03:51that she'll just be able to get everyone else to bend to her will.
03:54I did Rosetta Stone on the plane, but it hasn't kicked in yet.
04:00And any time she has to face consequences for her choices, she feels that she's been wronged.
04:06Serena Vanderwoodsen falls into a similar pattern. Convinced she's a kind person just doing her best,
04:13and just somehow always ending up the center of attention and drama. At first,
04:19when compared to more overt narcissist Blair Waldorf, Serena does seem like the nicer of the two.
04:24How do you manage to get out of everything unscathed?
04:27Because of nice. You should try it sometime.
04:29But as time goes on, we quickly see how her own insecurities and feelings of not being good enough,
04:36combined with her constant focus on herself, leads her down very similar paths to Blair.
04:42Serena does diverge from the general stereotype of the covert narcissist in that she's not afraid of the
04:48spotlight, but that's also because she exists in a very different world, where everyone is under the
04:54microscope to some degree. And so she uses covert narcissist techniques to play the game,
05:00create a sympathetic facade for herself, and use the grandiose persona she's developed for herself
05:06to both hide her insecurities and uphold her sense of entitlement. Now, with the rise of social media,
05:13many more people feel like they exist in that kind of world, where they're always under the spotlight.
05:19And this has led to a new externalization of covert narcissism.
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06:47greenchef.com slash 50thetake. As algorithms have become more adept at serving people content that is
06:53very particular to their own lives and niche interests, it seems that some people have forgotten
06:58that just because it's called a for you page doesn't mean that every single video was made
07:03specifically for you.
07:04Wow, what a nice sunny day.
07:06Um, excuse you, I have a sensitivity to light and the sun really bothers me,
07:11so it's not a nice day for me actually.
07:13Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear that.
07:15Delete this video.
07:16What?
07:17One of the more notable blow-ups that's resulted from this strain of thinking was the bean soup
07:22controversy, when a TikTok chef shared a simple recipe for a bean soup, and the comments became
07:28filled with people asking things like, what if I don't like beans? This was a very on-the-nose
07:33example of a trend people had been noticing for a while. A seeming inability among some commenters
07:39to realize that not everything is about and for them, and if they come across something that isn't,
07:44they can just scroll.
07:46It can be pretty hard to have observations about other people when you're only thinking about yourself.
07:52I would know.
07:54This trend, often referred to as what about me syndrome or whataboutism,
07:59is rampant in online spaces now.
08:01While it's definitely connected to concerns about critical thinking skills,
08:04which we'll unpack more in a second, it does also seem to be very much rooted in that basis of
08:10covert narcissism. The covert narcissists, upon encountering something like a bean soup when they
08:15don't like beans, don't even really think about the fact that the video could just be for other
08:21people. They should always be the center of attention. And so if they come across something
08:26that challenges that notion, they feel the need to push back. Because the covert narcissists are
08:31often afraid of direct confrontation, they instead use those more underhanded tactics,
08:37pretending to be just so confused or worried about what's happening. What if some people can't have
08:41beans? What if they don't have any beans? What if they're afraid of beans? Clark notes, although they're not
08:47always sneaky, some covert narcissists can take joy in creating confusion. They may not engage in blaming
08:54or shaming, but instead causing people to question their perceptions and second-guess themselves.
09:00A covert narcissist needs to use tactics like this to elevate themselves and maintain power in the
09:06interaction. If they can get you to question your perceptions, it allows them the opportunity to
09:12manipulate and exploit you more. This plays out across all different types of content.
09:18From becoming enraged that a quick video on budgeting doesn't include every possible budget
09:22that a human could have, to crashing out that someone is gatekeeping them by not immediately
09:26listing where they bought their t-shirt from, and beyond. The covert narcissist seeks to flip the
09:32situation so that they're not attention-seeking, but instead a victim attempting to right a grievous wrong.
09:38This also often comes as a part of a disingenuous attempt to use the existence of some marginalized
09:43group to justify their behavior. For example, well, some people have ADHD,
09:49so you can't get mad at me for showing up three hours late without calling.
09:52This can lead to the covert narcissist talking over people who do actually experience those issues.
09:58Because they aren't actually concerned, they just want to associate their own choices with those
10:04points of marginalization so that their attempt to use guilt to control the situation feels more
10:09effective. Even when one does attempt to include caveats and exceptions, the covert
10:15narcissists will still attempt to flip the situation into one in which they're able to
10:19identify themselves as a wronged party in some capacity. Chelsea Fagan of The Financial Diet
10:24encounters this on TikTok whenever she attempts to provide even the kindest, most basic advice.
10:29Instead of constantly beating yourself up for not making enough time for a certain project or
10:34creative act or hobby, just accept that that one wasn't naturally a passion or priority for you
10:39and move on to something else. And recently had enough and felt the need to push back.
10:43And inevitably tons of comments about why this doesn't apply to you because of insert reason here,
10:48including the caveats I already listed. She pointed out that these commenters weren't
10:52actually looking for help or advice. They just saw an opportunity to put down and critique
10:57someone else and jumped at it.
10:59Alright, I think it's high time for some of you guys to admit that you do have a hobby,
11:02and it's scrolling social media and being pedantic to strangers in comment sections.
11:07Now, is new technology taking the covert narcissist's desire to focus only on them
11:12to a new extreme? General Artificial Intelligence, or Gen AI, has a number of functional uses,
11:18from coding to assisting with scientific research and even diagnostics. But as it's become more
11:23commercialized and large language models or LLMs have exploded in use, some major issues have
11:30started to pop up. LLMs like ChatGPT appear to create a world that is exclusively about and for
11:37the user, telling them whatever they want to hear, regardless of the truth, in whatever way they want
11:43to hear it. For people already predisposed to covert narcissism, Gen AI seems like the perfect tool,
11:59a way to create a reality solely based off of themselves and the way they think things should
12:03be. There's long been a concern about the erosion of critical thinking skills, even before and
12:08disconnected from the rise of LLMs. A big part of the bean soup controversy was a concern that
12:14some people have so completely lost their ability to think critically, that they genuinely don't
12:20understand that every video they're served isn't just for them specifically. And now it seems that
12:25Gen AI may be exacerbating this problem. A study by Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft found that
12:31a reliance on Gen AI reduces critical thinking. Both our quantitative and qualitative results suggest
12:38that higher confidence in Gen AI is associated with less critical thinking, as Gen AI tools appear
12:44to reduce the perceived effort required for critical thinking tasks among knowledge workers.
12:48Confidence in AI is associated with reduced critical thinking effort, while self-confidence
12:54is associated with increased critical thinking effort. A lawyer who was a part of the survey noted,
12:59AI tends to make up information to agree with whatever points you're trying to make,
13:03so it takes valuable time to manually verify. For people who understand this, it just means more
13:08work to go back and verify everything and remove all of the fake details that the Gen AI made up.
13:13But for people who don't fully understand how Gen AI works and just believe everything it says is fact,
13:18this can mean onboarding a lot of incorrect information. And for people who are deliberately
13:24trying to skirt or rewrite the truth, those points of failure can actually be useful.
13:30There's no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you.
13:36This isn't a new concern at all. The authors of the study even paraphrase a key insight by
13:40Lisane Bainbridge about this major problem within these kinds of systems all the way back in 1983, noting,
13:47the key irony of automation is that by mechanizing routine tasks and leaving exception handling to
13:53the human user, you deprive the user of the routine opportunities to practice their judgment
13:59and strengthen their cognitive musculature, leaving them atrophied and unprepared when the exceptions do
14:06arise. All of this brings up the question of choice.
14:09It's a terrible thought. Are these feelings even real? Or are they just programming?
14:19How much of these problems that we're seeing are a result of people deliberately choosing to
14:23forego critical thinking in favor of aiming for their own ends, as the covert narcissists are wont to
14:29do, and how much of it is people genuinely never having developed the critical thinking skills to begin
14:35with, now being pulled along by a stream of bad actors? This muddled gray area is exactly where
14:42the covert narcissist thrives, able to shroud their narcissism behind genuine concerns.
14:48There is a pushback against this type of over-reliance on Gen AI, but in some ways it's
14:54beginning to mirror offshoots of other issues, take health for example, where pushback isn't based on
14:59facts and reality, but instead, the things I like are good and the things I don't like are bad.
15:04This can make it much more difficult to have genuine conversations about these topics,
15:08their effects, and how we should all move forward. But that doesn't mean that all is lost.
15:14As people have grown more and more tired of covert narcissists and bean soup behavior,
15:18they've begun calling it out. This both helps create pushback against this kind of behavior
15:23when it's being done deliberately, but can also work as a wake-up call for those who have
15:27adopted these tactics without really realizing what they're doing. Many young people in particular have
15:33picked up this kind of behavior by seeing it on social media growing up, for example.
15:38And so seeing major pushback from others might be the first time they ever really take a step back
15:44and realize the problem with engaging with others that way.
15:47There's always room for personal growth, and while it can be difficult for narcissists
15:52of any stripe to change their ways, it is totally possible. Watching this kind of behavior get called
15:57out on the regular actually helps some people realize what they're doing,
16:01which is the first step to making a big change.
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